


Crush Wound

by spindlekiss



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aurors, M/M, St Mungo's Hospital
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 14:50:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6083649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spindlekiss/pseuds/spindlekiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In between missions and sheets and newspaper articles, there are a lot of things that Harry and Draco don't talk about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crush Wound

**Crush Wound**

o O o

“Don’t fall in love with me.” he says, green eyes dark and serious.

Draco laughs. “That ego Potter, Merlin! It’s a wonder your head fits inside this house!”

Potter rolls onto his chest and stares him straight in the face. “I’m being serious Draco. Don’t fall in love with me.” he says.

“No need to worry about that you git, you’re just a good fuck in my eyes.” Draco replies somewhat carelessly, as he fits his hands around Potter’s arse and presses him closer.

Potter nods, still far too solemn for Draco’s taste. “Good. and that’s the way it needs to stay, no matter what.”

“No matter what.” Draco agrees amiably.

When they fuck, Draco sucks his apathy into Potters neck, leaving violent violet bruises across his throat and shoulders, he decides that Harry looks quite fetching in purple and him.

o O o

The next time he sees Potter, he’s not all vibrant and moaning between Draco’s Egyptian cotton sheets, he is instead plastered across the front page of the Daily Prophet. His pretty face grins at the camera, full of cheek, before he lifts a hand and makes a gesture that Draco knows to be what muggles refer to as the ‘rude finger’. The headline is bolded and reads ‘ _Harry Potter Donates Entire Fortune To Orphans_ ’. Despite himself, Draco reads the whole damn article.

o O o

“You’re a proper pauper now Potter, and my tastes run towards the expensive. Probably we’re over.” Draco says, looking down his doorstep at Potter.

Potter is bundled up in an oversized green knit with a fraying edge. His neck and face is protected from the chill by not one but two garishly coloured scarves. He looks like an idiot, and Draco pretends to himself that he doesn’t like it. Potter’s nose is all chill pink, and Draco can’t contain the sudden urge to kiss it, so he does, and when Potter only laughs in response he chalks it up as a victory. For some reason, they don’t fuck that night. Instead Draco makes hot chocolate with cinnamon and vanilla and they talk about life and death and sex until the sun rises.

o O o

Potter has tiny ribs. Once, Draco never thought he’d find anything small about Harry Potter, who had always seemed larger than life to him. First as an abstract childhood idol, then as the cartoonish caricature of a rival and finally as an object of his desire. Having Potter was different than how he had expected though. Not in a bad way, it was just that it had taken the intimacy that came with being lovers for Draco to realise that Potter was just a man. Nothing more and nothing less. A man with tiny effeminate ribs in fact, and small valleys that ran interference between them. He was also a man who had a line of hair down his middle, oddly an extra nipple beneath his left pectoral, and a little mole by his belly button. Draco kissed it every time Potter took his shirt off.

“You’re so pale Potter, ever considered going outside?”

“You’re one to talk.” Potter snorts.

“This pallor is au naturale,” Draco replies snootily as he gestures at his own body. “But seriously, I swear when we were younger you couldn’t camouflage with the snow.”

“That’s only because I was outdoors a lot with quidditch, I was exactly this pale as a child.” Harry says, his eyes are guarded though, and his body language has gone more closed off that it had been since they'd started up together.

Draco wonders if he had had deep blue ponds beneath his eyes as a child as well or if they, like the hollows by his collarbones are a recent addition. It’s not worth wondering about. They are not together in the normal sense of the word. Sharing a predilection for privacy and carnal pleasures does not mean that they share everything. Draco’s worries will go unvoiced.

o O o

“For me?” Draco asks, even thought it’s obvious.

He hadn’t realised Potter had caught him admiring it. Potter had been talking about some orphan thing when they had passed the shop after all. Still, Draco holds the coat to his chest, the material is soft and durable.

“Well, thankyou Potter. I adore it.”

They don’t talk much after that, and Potter doesn’t say anything when Draco wears the coat on their next stake out. They simply sit, and do their jobs.

o O o

Their team goes out for drinks, which is nice. They're celebrating their first success together as a squadron and it’s all very amicable and fun until Potter takes it upon himself to go dancing. Then... Draco doesn’t know. He is self-aware enough to recognise jealousy, but his pride has always ruled him, and he refuses to care for someone who has ordered him ‘not to fall in love’. Reciprocation does not seem likely and Draco is not the type of person who is masochistic enough to enjoy rejection. He prefers the torturous route of being close and yet not close enough. It stings in the best and worst way really. He swears to himself that he’s not going to go break them up. But when the man mouths at Potters throat, the same spot Draco had bruised up with his lips not three nights ago, he’s gone.

“May I have this dance,” he snaps, as he steps between them not waiting for an answer and wraps his hands around Potter’s hips.

Potter is looking at him without a smile and his eyes seem unfocused. “Draco?” he asks.

“Yes. I’m here.” he says.

Potter's palms are sweating, and for some reason that's all Draco’s thinking about when Potter falls into a dead faint.

o O o

When they arrive at St Mungo’s, the staff refuse to let Draco in to see him, even though Granger tries to argue with a medi-witch on his behalf. He goes home alone defeated and tries not to think about anything even vaguely related to Potter as he climbs into his bed tiredly.  He lies there for hours before even being able to shut his eyes.

o O o

“I’m dying.”

“Okay.”

They don’t talk about it.

o O o

Now when they fuck Draco has to worry about wether or not Potter is going to break. He realises that Potter has tiny ribs for a reason, feels sick that he liked it before.

Before.

He wishes he could go back to before.

Before, when he _thought_ he had known pain. He knew pain now. Watching Potter waste away, watching death sink it’s tendrils further into his lover's body. He wondered if the pain would ever stop.

o O o

“I-”

“Don’t say it,” Potter orders, his voice sounding sharp, and laced with panic. “Don’t, you promised you wouldn't so you can’t.”

“Why? What’s so bad about-”

“One selfish thing. One selfish thing is all I wanted, something that wouldn’t hurt anyone.” Potter interrupts. 

“But-”

“Don’t.” Potter’s word is final, but Draco knows that though they have never spoken anything aloud there is a wealth of knowledge that lies between them; words unspoken, thoughts kept silent.

The words _but it's hurting me_ hang between them like a sour taste.

Potter knows that he is hurting Draco, he must. But Draco supposes you can only be a martyr for so long before something snaps, before you try and take something for yourself. It’s just that some days Draco wishes that he wasn’t that thing Harry was so determined to take.

o O o

Draco wakes up in the middle of the night, Potter, next to him, is sobbing in the dark. Draco too begins to feel an ache in his throat. This strikes him as stupidly tragic, and so before he can come to his senses and think about it rationally he rolls over quickly, bracing both of his arms either side of Potter’s head. He kisses Potter straight on the mouth. They’ve never done that before. His lips have been nearly every single place on Potters body, but by unspoken agreement so far they had avoided kissing each others lips directly. Potter blossoms under his ministrations, mouth opening to the sensation as he surrenders to Draco completely. He is still weeping. And Draco brushes his thumbs along the top of his cheeks, trying to wipe away the misery as they desperately grasp at each other.

o O o

One day, they are walking along some London street and Draco is trying to make Potter laugh with his impressions. He’s halfway through his snooty old lady act when they hear a disapproving sniff from somewhere behind them. The woman is of an age, and incredibly stately, her nose is up-turned in the exact way rich people had that Draco had been exaggerating not a second before.

Before he can stop himself he snorts loudly and giggles. Potter, set off by his Draco's inability to maintain at least the facade of dignity, bursts into laughter, dimples out and eyes crinkly. The woman spits at their feet as she passes and stalks away haughtily.

“Oh Merlin,” Potter giggles, one hand resting on Draco’s shoulder. “You must have bollocks of steel Draco, I wouldn’t have had the daring.”

“It’s not that Potter, it’s the knowledge that I’m going to be twice as bad as all that when I reach seniority, I’ll bet you now.”

Potter smiles. “Yeah, I bet."

It takes a moment for Draco to realise Harry won’t be there, won't be alive. But by then Potter has already started walking again and is pointing excitedly at a three-legged dog. Draco follows him, pasting a smile to his face.

o O o

When Potter is half an hour late to their lunch date he doesn’t worry, he goes home. But when there is an owl waiting for him with two envelopes, one bearing the official St. Mungo’s seal, and the other Hermione Granger's signature, he panics.

o O o

The prophet calls the ceremony a ‘ _big affair_ ’, and Draco can’t help but think how much Harry would have hated it, already ministry officials are attaching his name to their own political agendas, and the rest of the community weep for a hero they never knew. Draco wants to kill them all, or himself.

It’s a week later that he realises he’s gone and done the one thing he told Harry he wouldn’t.

He hadn’t realised love could make him hate so much.

o O o

When he visits the grave they put Potter under he doesn’t feel anything except empty. The warm boy he knew has nothing to do with the cold slab of stone they have chosen to guard his body. The warm boy he knew was probably laughing at him.

Why did you have to do this, he thinks. Stupid Potter. Why won’t you just come back, like you did last time.

Come back.

Come back.

Come back.

There’s no reply. And so Draco weeps into the freshly turned soil and the silence. It's deafening. 

 

o O o

Visiting a stone is not the same. Draco does it every month anyway.

o O o

Years and years later, when the spring of his life is finally at it’s end, it is not Astoria who greets him. It is a green eyed boy with open arms, and a red nose, and a mole by his belly button, who takes his hand and kisses death to his lips. It is an ending, and Draco Malfoy becomes a memory.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry. If I have to suffer for imagining it then you do too.  
> Soundtrack, if you're into that sort of thing.  
> [If I Go by Storm the Sky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JYadtqgL5Y)  
> [Think Twice by Groove Armada](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQM5-Ks64is)


End file.
